Same old Senate same old People same old Rome same old Gaius Marius. Now forty-seven years old. Next year he'd be fifty-seven, the year after that sixty-seven, and then they'd shove him into the middle of a pyre of logs and kindling, and up he'd go in a puff of smoke. Goodbye, Gaius Marius, you upstart from the pigpens of Arpinum, you non-Roman. Sure enough, the herald brayed his summons. Sighing, Gaius Marius began to move, lifting his head to see if there was anyone within footshot he could tread on heavily and feel good about doing so. No one. Of course. At which moment his eye caught the eye of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was smiling as if he knew exactly what Gaius Marius was thinking. Arrested, Gaius Marius gazed back. Only a backbencher, but never mere lobby fodder, this most senior of the Julius Caesars left in the Senate now his older brother, Sextus, was dead. Tall, as erect as if he were a Military Man, wide in the shoulders still, his fine head of silver-gilt hair a fitting crown for his lined, handsome face. He wasn't young, had to be upward of fifty-five years old, but he looked as if he was going to become one of those desiccated ancients the patrician nobility produced with monotonous regularity, tottering off to every meeting of Senate or People at ninety-plus, and continuing to speak praiseworthy good sense. The sort you couldn't kill with a sacrificial axe. The sort who when it was all boiled down made Rome what Rome was, in spite of the plethora of Caecilius Metelluses. Better than the rest of the world put together. "Which Metellus is going to harangue us today?" asked Caesar as they fell in beside each other and began to ascend the many steps of the temple. "One still to earn his extra name," said Gaius Marius, his gigantic eyebrows leaping up and down like millipedes on pins. "Quintus Caecilius plain old Metellus, younger brother of our revered Pontifex Maximus." "Why him?" "Because he's going to run for consul next year, I think.